Nigel's parents are facing charges of recruiting “bandits” to topple Robert Mugabe’s government, the same charges Jestina Mukoko is facing. These allegations have been widely dismissed as baseless. Recently the South African president, who is also the Chairman of SADC, said of the allegations, “We never believed that.”

Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison, where two year old Nigel is being kept in solitary confinement, is notorious for its atrocious conditions even during Zimbabwe’s better days. Now however, the conditions are much worse. Prison authorities do not have enough food to feed the inmates. They are struggling to make ends meet, much like the rest of Zimbabwe’s public sector. Against this background, the prison authorities say that they have been given instructions not to allow food to be brought to the inmates (including to children) from the outside. No visits from relatives are allowed for these particular prisoners, including for 2 year old Nigel. Even lawyers struggle to gain access and when they do, there is always a state official present.

In the afternoon, lawyers attend at Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison with the medical team. They find that their clients are not being held as ordered in the Prison Hospital, but are being kept in solitary confinement in the Maximum Security Prison. They have now been joined by the final confirmed abductee, Violet Mupfuranhehwe and her son, two-year-old Nigel Mutemagau, who are now also to be held in solitary confinement at the Maximum Security Prison.

Nigel’s plight has been largely ignored by the mainstream media and attention is focused very much on Jestina Mukoko, the most famous of the jailed activists. Social media has been especially active on the case of Jestina Mukoko, with most Zimbabwean blogs putting up a badge during her disappearance, providing phone numbers where people could call in and give any information on her whereabouts. Several Facebook groups calling for her release have also been created (the most popular of which currently has 2,242 members). Sokwanele has been especially active in encouraging readers to phone Jestina’s local police station to ask them what they were doing about finding her.

Nigel’s plight, however, has been largely a footnote. In my blog, I wrote:

A boy just like the sweet little kid above is imprisoned right now in one of Zimbabwe's most brutal and notorious prisons. […]

Imprisoning a two year old in a maximum security prison together with murderers and rapists and some of the worst kinds of people on earth boggles the mind. I do not know how the government of Robert Mugabe is justifying this cruelity to itself, but I am more shocked at our own reaction, our silence and complicity in all this.

Where is our sense of outrage, Zimbabwe? Where is our humanity? In all the hundreds of thousands of column inches written about the Jestina Mukoko abduction and trial, this toddler is but a footnote in only a handful of them. He lies there on the cold floor of one Zimbabwe's most notorious prisons every day and night, forgotten by a world that is screaming very loudly for a 50 plus year old woman (Jestina) to be freed.

As a result, I have started a petition on my own blog to be handed over to the Attorney General of Zimbabwe on Friday this week, calling for the child to be released and for him to get medical attention as well as access to Child Welfare agents.

I ask that we at least do something: Please leave your name in the comments section of this article (below). Just your name. We will put all the names together and present them to Mr Tomana, the Attorney General of Zimbabwe, asking that the child be given access to Child Welfare agents immeditely and freed from that prison.

I have also posted an alert on Facebook, where the Zimbabwean community (especially those outside the country) is especially active. I am hopeful. There is no justification whatsoever for keeping a child that young in jail, let alone in solitary confinement. The idea is basically to publicise the plight of this helpless child so much that the authorities will be shamed into action.

The Attorney General of Zimbabwe has the power to get the child released. Even if the release is attached to stringent bail conditions for the mother, it is better than leaving the toddler where he is now. Like I said, I am hopeful. There are other influential political players in Zimbabwe who have started to also take note of this and I am sure come Friday, we may well see some progress.

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12 comments

[…] This is Nigel Mutemagau, who is now being held in solitary confinement in Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison, on the outskirts of Harare, Zimbabwe. He was taken into custody with his parents nearly three months ago by Zimbabwe’s secret police, the Central Intelligence Organisation. Nigel’s parents are facing charges of recruiting “bandits” to topple Robert Mugabe’s government, the same charges Jestina Mukoko is facing. These allegations have been widely dismissed as baseless. Recently the South African president, who is also the Chairman of SADC [Southern African Development Community], said of the allegations, “We never believed that.” […]

I am having difficulty receiving this information. Is this true. Please forgive my lack of faith but the outcry of injustice is deafening and is most horrific. if this is true what we are plummeting further into the debasement of humanity more quickly than I can perceive.

[…] morning I woke up to a story on Global Voices about two-year old Nigel Mutemagau who was abducted with his parents three months ago and taken to […]

14 January 2009, 6:39 am

DIDMASS MUTASA

I was young and very vulnerable in 1980,when we got our independence , we celebrated with song and dance. Little did we know that we were celebrating our demise. My grandmother who had worked for different employers has been taken around different african states during the time they gained their Independence namely Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique ..

She said to me .. DIDMASS DIDMASS DIDMASS to me three times .. and resignadly said you shall see … celebrating the new african government led by africans . Mark my words if i am still alive in 20 yrs time you shall tell me the story.

These words are now reverbaratting in my ears as if she is saying it right now. Zvinorwadza weduwe kuilltreatwer neaiti arikurwira kubvisa hudzvinyiriri in actual fact he was fighting only to liberate himself and his few friends and relatives Mwari ngaave neya ..

[…] Zimbabwean authorities were holding a two-year old child prisoner, along with his activist parents. Denford Magora drew my attention to the situation, and has been orchestrating an online campaign to seek the child’s […]

i been following the situation n zimbabean for years, that stupid s.o.b. must be on allucigenous drugs, how he can put up its citicens to scuh a disgratefull situation. who he things he is GOD.HE IS A STUPID MANIAC AND SHOULD BE PUT IN JAIL